


errant scars and dying stars

by elliebell (Naladot)



Category: GOT7
Genre: 12 Monkeys AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Crushes, F/M, Gen, Love Triangles, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Plague, Possible Character Death, Time Travel, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22867159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell
Summary: 12 Monkeys AU/canon fusion. While away from Seoul to film a movie, Jinyoung is visited by Jaebum—but not the Jaebum he knows. This Jaebum has travelled from a post-apocalyptic future to enlist Jinyoung's help to stop the world's population from being wiped out by a plague, and he goes to Jinyoung because at some point, Jinyoung left a message for Jaebum to find in the future. As Jinyoung tries to determine if the future-Jaebum is even real, he discovers that Suzy, among others, has joined a strange and mystical cult that has decided the only way to end human suffering is to break time itself, a proposition which begins to seem attractive to Jinyoung as he contemplates a reality where he can save neither himself nor Jaebum.
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Park Jinyoung
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31
Collections: JJP Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This story—and the TV show and movie it’s based on—was conceived of before the outbreak of COVID-19. I decided to continue with it because this story is quite obviously concerned with the world of science fiction and not reality. Even so, I urge any readers who are concerned about COVID-19 and other epidemics around the globe to support the work of medical professionals with good research and whatever other method is appropriate for you. Real life, of course, is not like science fiction, and heroes respond to epidemics not with grand zombie battles or time travel but by showing up and doing hard, tiring work day in and day out. Science fiction deals in the extraordinary, but it’s in the ordinary that we can really do anything heroic in the work toward global health.
> 
> Also, thank you to the JJP Big Bang mod for bearing with me to the very end! Thank you also to my beta reader @jiasangel as well as my friends Shida, Yun, and others who helped me figure out what the heck was going on with this fic multiple times. And thank you to the amazing artist @lovefoolthatsme for creating beautiful artwork for this crazy fic!

After a long day on set, what Jinyoung wants most is to take a hot shower and fall into bed. Working on a film is more and less grueling than his idol schedule; the difference, perhaps, is in the degree of solitude. When Got7 promotes, he moves from place to place with a constant backdrop of noise which fills his ears like the high-pitched hum of a television set that’s never turned off. As an actor, however, he goes home to silence. He flips on the television, but even the smiling idols on screen can’t drown out the quiet. 

(He glances at the screen, briefly, and muses over the people on screen—one, Jaebum had met once and warned them all not to associate with, saying he was a scandal waiting to happen. Another, Jinyoung has heard through the grapevine has been hospitalized twice for reasons unknown but often speculated. Another Jinyoung knows for a fact hires prostitutes in every country his group promotes in, like a collector of trinkets. He thinks about all this, and pushes it out of his mind.)

The movie he’s in requires him to be in great shape—if you get hired to play a spy, then you’d better look the part—so Jinyoung begins his third sequence of exercises for the day. He hates the canned sound of variety show laughter and even more the silence beneath it, the emptiness of the room and the itchy feeling of loneliness. After his push-ups, he changes the channel to a cartoon, and starts on crunches. It’s then that he hears a knock on his door.

Perplexed, he gets up and moves to the doorway. He’s had a few too many run-ins with crazy fans to open the door without first peering through the peep-hole. He expects to see someone with a camera or maybe a knife (both have happened, and were never leaked to the press) but instead, he sees Jaebum.

He opens the door immediately, laughing lightly. “What are you doing here?” he teases. “Did you really miss me that much?”

Jaebum has never done anything like this before, going well out of his way for a surprise visit, but it’s Jinyoung’s first feature film and in the last year or so Jaebum has become surprisingly sentimental, maybe since he knows their boyband days are numbered. Jinyoung glances behind Jaebum for camera crews, in case this is a staged surprise. But the hallway is empty and Jaebum stares at the floor, answering Jinyoung’s question with silence. Then he pushes his way past Jinyoung and into the room.

Jinyoung hesitates as he closes the door. Not a surprise visit, then. “Is something wrong?” he asks, sliding all the locks on the door and turning around to face Jaebum.

Jaebum stands awkwardly next to the bed, frowning at the bedside lamps. His eyes dart to Jinyoung like he can’t think of what to say. Jinyoung’s pulse picks up a little bit as he speeds through the list of things that might cause Jaebum to show up here like this, unannounced and obviously troubled. He looks different than when Jinyoung last saw him—a month ago, he notes in his mind, right before he left to start filming.  _ You’ll do well, Jinyoung,  _ Jaebum had said.  _ You always do. _

“Hyung,” Jinyoung says again, crossing the distance between them and putting a hand on Jaebum’s shoulder. Jaebum’s favorite leather jacket is scratched up, with several gashes in the fabric and dark stains that certainly weren’t there the last time he’d worn it. Jinyoung takes in several other things in quick succession: Jaebum’s long hair, tied in a top knot, looks like it hasn’t been washed in days; he has a scar on his cheek that Jinyoung never noticed before; he has a stale smell that isn’t dirty exactly but also far from his usual cologne; his eyes flick up to Jinyoung’s and then away immediately, like he’s afraid of what Jinyoung might find.

The words  _ psychotic break _ float across Jinyoung’s mind. Jaebum has always been stable—sometimes frustratingly so—aside from occasional anger issues (more or less resolved years ago), taxing perfectionism, and a period of depression that Jinyoung supposed was inevitable in their line of work. But there’s a first time for everything. “Do you want to sit down?” Jinyoung asks.

Jaebum sinks down onto the double bed Jinyoung isn’t using, surprisingly docile. “Do you have any water?” he asks, eyes flickering up to Jinyoung’s again.

“Yeah—yeah.” Jinyoung darts over to the shelf where housekeeping had left two water bottles and brings one back to Jaebum. Jaebum guzzles it down without stopping for air. There’s the thin white line of another scar creeping up over his collarbone. Has he been missing this whole time he claimed he was going to stay with his mother? Wandering around the streets, unnoticed because who would assume that Got7’s Jaebum had turned up homeless?

Jaebum twists the empty water bottle in his hands and rests his elbows on his knees. “Jinyoung,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“I’m here,” Jinyoung says quickly. His pulse quickens as he tries not to assume what Jaebum might have to say, but he’s teetering on the edge of anticipation, terrified of what Jaebum’s words will change.

“And you’re not going to believe any of it,” Jaebum says. His eyes are dark, unbearably so. “So I just want you to listen, and pretend that you believe me. Can you do that for me?”

Jinyoung tries to swallow, but his mouth is dry. “Yeah—yeah, of course.” How could his friend—his closest friend—turn up like this after only a month apart?

Jaebum rubs his fingers against his forehead and heaves a sigh. “I’m—I’m not the Jaebum you know,” he says. “I’ve traveled back in time.”

These words clunk heavily in the room. Jinyoung stares at Jaebum, uncomprehending.

With a start, Jinyoung realizes that the cartoon is still playing on the television, and he grabs the remote to turn it off. He doesn’t have a clue about how to get someone checked in for psychiatric treatment, but he should call someone in the company as quickly as possible—someone on staff should have looked into this—they had protocol in place for how to put an artist on suicide watch, how to recognize self-harm behaviors—and Jinyoung can’t remember any of it right now.

“Jinyoung,” Jaebum interrupts. He gestures to Jinyoung’s cell phone on the end table. “Call me.”

In a daze, Jinyoung obediently picks up his phone and dials Jaebum. No other phone rings, and across from him, Jaebum just watches, his face expressionless.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end of the line is unmistakably Jaebum’s. “Hyung?” Jinyoung asks, almost in a whisper.

“Are you okay?” asks the Jaebum on the phone. The Jaebum in front of him gestures for him to wrap up the call.

Jinyoung clears his throat and moves seamlessly into an act, apparently just as obedient toward this Jaebum’s directions as any other version’s. “Yeah—sorry, I misdialed. I’m distracted.”

“Oh. Okay.” Jaebum on the phone sounds uncertain. “You should get some rest.”

“Yeah—yeah, you’re right.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

Jinyoung hangs up the phone. “Is this a hidden camera?” he asks Jaebum, the one in front of him. He cranes his neck, trying to spot spy cameras in the room. His sister always held up a flashlight on her phone to look for reflections, and he does this now, but nothing flashes. Jaebum waits, completely silent.

“I told you you just need to pretend to believe me,” Jaebum says. “Until I’m done explaining.”

Jinyoung drops his phone onto the bed. “Are you an actor?”

“No.”

“And this isn’t a hidden camera?”

“ _ Jinyoung— _ ” Jaebum says through gritted teeth, and this is the moment when Jinyoung knows, without a doubt, that the person sitting in front of him  _ is _ Jaebum. The way tension coils in his shoulders looks so familiar, Jinyoung can feel it tightening his own. He doesn’t know who was on the other end of the phone.

“Go on then,” Jinyoung says. “Explain it all to me, Mr. Future.”

Jaebum stares at Jinyoung so long that Jinyoung knows he’s resisting the urge to roll his eyes. The room is very quiet, as though the world around them is holding its breath for an explanation.

Jinyoung inhales. Exhales.

“This year,” Jaebum finally begins, “There will be an outbreak of the worst virus the world has ever seen. This plague spreads from here to the rest of the world. Within a year, half the world’s population will be dead. Within ten years—” he hesitates, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Well, we think only two percent of the world is left. But that’s an estimate. There could be more. Probably less.”

Jinyoung doesn’t say anything. He’d promised Jaebum he would pretend to believe him, but now that he’s being fed this apocalyptic story, he’s certain that this is some kind of elaborate hidden camera. His only option is to go along, but he doesn’t know how.

(And there’s something in Jaebum’s eyes that he doesn’t like or recognize—something like an animal in pain, and it bothers him because Jaebum has never been this good of an actor, and no hidden camera prank could elicit that out of him, and Jinyoung doesn’t know what to do.)

“A year or so ago,” Jaebum continues in the silence, “I took shelter in this—lab, I guess, where they were working on a ‘cure.’ Turns out, what they wanted to do was travel back in time, and they picked  _ me _ because—”

He comes to a full stop and stares at the floor.

“Because why?” Jinyoung prompts.

Jaebum looks back up. “Because you left me a message.”

“I didn’t—”

“ _ Will _ leave,” Jaebum corrects. He pulls something out of his jacket pocket, a folded sheet of paper, and hands it to Jinyoung. On instinct, Jinyong reaches out to take it.

It’s a picture—a picture of  _ him _ , in a tux and holding a flute of champagne, smiling beside a man he’s never seen before.

“Your message says that the plague begins with this man.” Jaebum taps the picture.

“I’ve never seen this man before.”

“Then you haven’t met him yet.”

The way Jaebum speaks is so certain, so firm. Jinyoung shuts up because he doesn’t know how to argue with absurdity.

Then he opens his mouth again, because that’s never stopped him from trying. “Anything can be photoshopped—”

“It’s the real thing, Jinyoung. This is all real.”

“Then tell me something only you could know,” Jinyoung fires back.

Now it’s Jaebum’s turn to sit in silence. The moment draws out thick, almost unbearable.

Jinyoung thinks about the last time he saw Jaebum, a month ago. They’d gone out for food on a rainy evening, just the two of them, and talked for hours. This Jaebum sitting in front of him is so unlike from the one who’d sat across from him at the table. Like two different men, almost. Jinyoung considers again that Jaebum has suffered some sort of break with reality, and is now acting on it in elaborate ways.

Then Jaebum interrupts him again. “I know—” he begins. Hesitates.

“Know what?”

Jaebum looks up, and Jinyoung’s heart moves into his throat.

“I know you’re in love with me,” Jaebum says.

Jinyoung’s blood stops moving in his veins. He holds his breath for a long, drawn-out moment, and then gasps in air, involuntarily moving his hand up to push back his hair. 

Hearing his secret spoken aloud like this—just  _ stated _ , bare and unprotected—he’s never imagined this. “Any—anyone could have figured that out,” he says with a light laugh, just barely holding himself together.

“You told me,” Jaebum corrects. “Ten years ago.”

They stare at each other, Jinyoung taking in shallow rattling breaths and Jaebum impassive.

“You say it like there’s no hope for us,” Jinyoung attempts, trying to smile. Of course he’s always known that there’s no chance for him and Jaebum to be an  _ actual  _ couple. They sell the idea, and Jinyoung lives for the on-stage moments of intimacy that will never be replicated in private. He has accepted this. Reconciled himself to it. But that doesn’t mean he likes it.

Jaebum’s gaze seems to bore right through him. That furtive, animal look grows all the stronger, and Jinyoung suppresses the urge to reach out and touch him.

“There’s not,” Jaebum says. His gaze drops from Jinyoung’s, like a cold draft rushing into the room.

They sit in silence for what feels like an eternity. Jinyoung can’t bear to think about the exchange of words they just shared, so instead he imagines where Jaebum must have been all this time. Not living in an apocalyptic future wasteland—surely not—but lost. Wandering around the streets, hitching rides out to where Jinyoung is filming. The thought of it, though, only makes Jinyoung’s heart ache, because if he’d known, he would have dropped everything to go out and find Jaebum. Everything. 

But why would Jaebum use Jinyoung’s most closely-kept secret as leverage to make him believe this ridiculous story? This is what Jinyoung can’t figure out, because it is unnecessarily cruel, and Jaebum is many things, but not that.

Jaebum lifts his arm, and Jinyoung jumps.

“Your watch,” Jaebum says.

Jinyoung glances down. His watch was a gift from Jaebum, though he hasn’t thought about that in years. He takes it off, and Jaebum holds it in his right hand.

“Now,” Jaebum says. He pulls another one out of his pocket with his left hand and hands it to Jinyoung. “Look at it,” he says. “It’s the same one, isn’t it?”

Jinyoung turns it over in his hands. It has the same dent in the side as his own, the same chip in the glass front. He looks at the back, and there is the engraving.  _ For my friend. JJ Project forever. _

“Now set that one on the table,” Jaebum instructs.

Jinyoung does so, and then looks back at Jaebum. Jaebum has pulled out a knife.

“What the hell—” Jinyoung bursts out. His muscles tense in preparation to tackle Jaebum and dodge the knife.

But Jaebum doesn’t move a muscle. “Watch,” he says.

He scratches the knife across the watch’s face. As soon as the knife touches the glass, Jinyoung— _ feels _ something.

Like the earth has stopped turning.

Like he’s been plunged under water.

Like the stars have fallen out of the sky.

He stares, transfixed, as the knife drags across the watch’s face. The scratch digs into the glass. And simultaneously, a scratch forms on the face of the watch on the table.

“This is a trick,” he breathes, desperate to believe his own words. “An elaborate trick—”

“It’s not a trick, Jinyoung.” He motions to hand back the watch just as Jinyoung begins to reach for the other one on the table. “Ah,” Jaebum says, pulling back. “Don’t let them touch. You’ll cause a paradox.”

Jinyoung looks back at him. “A paradox?”

“You can’t bring matter from one time in physical contact with itself in a different time.” He waves the watch in the air, like this is an obvious thing that Jinyoung should have known.

“What would happen?” Jinyoung asks.

Jaebum apparently hasn’t considered this question, because he frowns, and shrugs in the way that he does when he doesn’t have a good answer to something, but doesn’t want to surrender the high ground. “Rip in the time-space fabric, I guess.”

“You have no idea what that means,” Jinyoung teases automatically.

And then the strangest thing—after all the other things—happens. Jaebum, the future-Jaebum with matted hair and haunted eyes, laughs. Their eyes meet, and for a moment, they are exactly as they have always been.

Jaebum’s smile fades. He sets the watch down on the bed, and takes the other one off the table. “I’ll be back. I’ll meet you backstage at the KBS Gayo Daechukje.”

“And risk a paradox?” Jinyoung says, half-kidding.

“I’ll be sick this year. Appendicitis. I won’t be able to perform.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jinyoung says. “This is probably our last one, maybe ever—”

“Gotta go,” Jaebum cuts him off. He stares Jinyoung down, something unreadable in his expression. “Jinyoung, I—”

And then, right before Jinyoung’s eyes, he flickers, and snaps out of existence.

  
  
  
  


In the days that follow, Jinyoung tries to find a way to explain away the event to himself. He does not tell anyone else, because he still possesses a small bit of sanity that he is not keen to lose. But everyone can tell he is not quite himself. The director of the film he is working on suggests he take a day off to rest after Jinyoung forgets his lines  _ again _ nearly a week after the event.

“I’m sorry,” Jinyoung insists, stepping into the director’s trailer. He’d been attracted to the indie project because of its unique characters and mind-bending plot twists, but now it seems far too close to his reality. “I’m really not trying to screw up like this.”

“I know, Jinyoung,” says the director, and he seems sincere. “But I also know you’ve been keeping a challenging schedule for a long time—”

“And this isn’t too challenging,” Jinyoung says quickly.

“And maybe you need a day off,” he finishes. “Go see a friend or family. Take a long nap. I want you on this film, Jinyoung, and you’ll be better off rested than just trying to push through.”

Seeing that he isn’t going to win this argument, Jinyoung decides he has to trust that his director is telling him the truth. And now that the opportunity to go back to Seoul and see Jaebum for himself has presented itself, he feels a sharp tug in his chest to hit the road immediately. He thanks the director, and returns to his hotel, where he surveys the room once again for any sign of funny tricks of the light. Here is the place where Jaebum disappeared. No matter what, Jinyoung can’t seem to explain that away.

He speeds the whole way to Seoul. It’s dark when he arrives, and snowing a little, thin flakes that melt as soon as they hit the pavement. He pulls into his apartment’s parking garage and dials Jaebum from the car, nervous for what he’ll hear on the other end.

“Hello?”

Jaebum sounds normal, and for a moment, Jinyoung’s mind goes blank. He pictures Jaebum snapping right out of existence, and he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Jinyoung? Are you okay?”

“Hey! Yeah.” Jinyoung rubs his eyes and discovers that he’s forgotten his carefully rehearsed speech, which would have elicited hints of information from Jaebum if it had, in fact, been an elaborate prank. “Can you come over?”

“You’re in Seoul?” Jaebum asks, worry evident in his tone.

“Yeah,” Jinyoung says. He tries to think of a lie to explain why he’s here, but nothing comes to mind.

“Sure. I’ll be there in an hour.”

His immediate, no-questions-asked reply sends a small jolt to Jinyoung’s heart, but he’s so tired that he can’t even ruminate on his unfortunate unrequited love story. Instead, after they hang up, he uses the last of his energy to drag himself out of the car and up to his apartment. It’s a nice place that he purchased a few years back while still pretending to live at the dorms, for the sake of fans and to throw off the less savvy stalkers. Usually when he walks in he feels relieved to be home in the carefully decorated space he’d created for himself, but this time, it feels like he’s walked into a stranger’s house.

He sinks down on the couch, and then falls asleep.

He jolts awake to the sound of the doorbell. With a terrible feeling of deja vu, he answers the video call and sees Jaebum on the otherside, grainy in the camera screen. Without speaking, he lets Jaebum in and waits, his hands shaking a little.

Minutes later, he hears the sound of a knock on the door. He launches himself toward the door and unlocks it quickly, then yanks it open, halfway expecting to see the long-haired, scarred version of Jaebum who appeared at the hotel.

But it’s regular Jaebum, the Jaebum he knows. His hair has been carefully styled to hang in his eyes in perfect loose curls. He has a nose ring in and so many earrings a pirate would be jealous. His clothes are crisp and clean, and he smells strongly of his favorite, expensive cologne.

“What’s wrong?” he demands, pushing his way into the entryway.

Jinyoung laughs lightly to himself. Apparently  _ some _ things didn’t change after you went through an apocalypse.

Jaebum looks at him oddly, then bends down to take off his shoes. “What are you doing back here?” he asks. “I thought you were on location until the end of the month.”

Right in time for the end-of-the-year shows, Jinyoung thinks.

“I am,” Jinyoung says. “I was given a day off.”

Jaebum’s eyebrows lift. “Really?”

He can obviously tell that something is wrong, but just having him—the  _ normal  _ him—standing here is so overwhelming that Jinyoung wants to cry. It had to have been a dream. It  _ had _ to have been.

“I’m, um,” Jinyoung begins. He doesn’t actually have a good idea of what to say. Maybe  _ he _ is the one about to have a breakdown. “Tired.”

“Tired.”

He looks at Jinyoung, and Jinyoung looks back at him. 

“Here,” Jaebum says finally, “Let me play you some of the stuff I’ve been working on.”

They move to the living room, where they sit on the couch and Jinyoung waits while Jaebum pulls out a speaker for his phone, trying not to think too much. But he can’t slow his pounding heart, or the wave of relief at having answered the door to the Jaebum he knows.

Jaebum hits play, and a song fills the room. The beat is smooth, and the melody catchy. Jinyoung is surprised, then, when a female voice comes over the speakers.

“Is this Suzy?” he asks, jolted out of his previous spiral. He had no idea that Suzy and Jaebum still talked—he hasn’t talked to Suzy much at all since she left the company, despite once considering her a close friend. He still does, actually, in the way he considers a number of industry people to be close friends. They’re comrades-in-arms, united forever by the bizarre experience of fame and its demands.

“Yeah,” Jaebum says, his face totally neutral. “She’s kind of having a rough time right now, so I asked her to try recording one of my songs, and she can use it if she wants.”

“I didn’t know she wanted to make a comeback as a singer.”

Jaebum shrugs, head bobbing in time with the music. The song is good, and to be honest, better with Suzy’s voice than it would have been with Jaebum’s. Jinyoung wonders what kind of difficulties she might be having. She was often ill-used by those around her, social climbers who took advantage of her perpetual naivete. Jinyoung had stopped spending time with her partially because he couldn’t stand that she tolerated people who had so little concern for her well-being.

“And I guess you’re having a rough time, too?” Jaebum asks, turning down the volume of his music and turning to face Jinyoung.

Sitting like this, their knees are almost touching. Jinyoung momentarily entertains a fantasy he has no intention of acting on, but has perfected in his mind. He’s always imagined it would happen like this, the two of them alone in a quiet place, without any interruptions. Jinyoung would have to make the first move, but he would lean forward and kiss Jaebum very carefully, reaching up to brush his fingers against Jaebum’s jaw, and Jaebum would be frozen at first, uncertain of what to do. And then he would return the kiss.

The first time Jinyoung ever had this fantasy, they were in JJ Project, and they loathed each other. Jinyoung didn’t understand his attraction to this person who so consistently made him angry. Jaebum was stringent and rigid, and as a teenager, Jinyoung had been more loose and free with his words than in later years. And back then, they both had a tendency to become angry over simple things. But what most often angered Jinyoung was the crystal-clear certainty that what he wanted most was for Jaebum to see him as something other than a work partner, and definitely not a friend.

But he knew he could not act on his desire. Jaebum would reject him, he was certain. And now he has assurance from a time-traveling Jaebum that not only would he be rejected, but that Jinyoung would spend the aftermath of his confession trying to escape a plague. Or maybe this was all a figment of Jinyoung’s imagination, concocted as a way to deal with the anguish of knowing this particular love story could only end tragically.

“Something happened,” Jinyoung says, his voice thick, “down at the set. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But it disturbed you.”

Jinyoung feels the heavy pressure of tears threatening to well up in his eyes. “Yeah.”

Jaebum reaches out and pats his shoulder, subtly drawing Jinyoung forward. Cuddling on stage eventually made Jaebum more comfortable with expressing affection to those younger than him, a gesture previously reserved for his hyungs. Jinyoung shifts so that he can rest his head against Jaebum’s shoulder, and tries not to sink too deeply into his warmth.

“Whatever you need,” Jaebum says, “You know I’m here for you.”

Ironically, the things Jinyoung needs most are the things Jaebum cannot help him with. He needs to get rid of his feelings for Jaebum, and he needs to make sense of whatever delusion he was having back at the hotel.

“I know,” Jinyoung says.

  
  
  
  


In the morning, Jinyoung wakes up and ponders what he should do with an entire day off. The hours of free time stretching in front of him feel like such a luxury that he actually feels guilty, and keeps checking his phone for the angry calls of a manager demanding to know where he is.

He considers calling up his other bandmates as he pours himself a cup of coffee, but then imagines how quickly they’d read his strained mental state and start demanding answers. That is something he appreciates about Jaebum. They always understand each other, and often don’t need to use words to communicate their feelings. The rest of his band behaves differently, usually demanding answers, which Jinyoung does often need—but not when his secret is “a time-traveling Jaebum visited me from the future and told me the world is going to end.”

He still has the photo future-Jaebum gave him. He pulls it out of his bag again and looks at it while he sips his coffee. The suit he’s wearing in the pictures is one he’s never seen before, not to mention the man standing next to him. The background is dark, unidentifiable. Why would he leave Jaebum a message as cryptic as this? Assuming this isn’t all a vivid delusion, he feels especially concerned for the actions of his future self, as if that person is a different entity from himself right now, acting in ways Jinyoung currently can’t predict. Disturbed by this line of thinking, he places the photo on his end table, and returns to his phone.

He dials Wonpil and lets the phone ring a dozen times before he remembers that Day6 is out of the country on a concert tour. Then it occurs to him what Jaebum said about Suzy having a rough time, and without really thinking, he sends her a text.

She texts back less than a minute later.  _ I’m free today if you want to meet~ _

And so a few hours later he finds himself waiting outside Suzy’s apartment in his car, his face hidden behind a mask. Suzy is still extravagantly famous, but he doesn’t feel worried about the possibility of paparazzi pictures making them front-page news, probably because he can really only think about one thing right now, which is future-Jaebum.

He’s deep in thought about the plausibility of time travel when the passenger door of his car opens, causing him to jump in his seat. But it’s just Suzy. She laughs at him, her gorgeous smile just the same as the one he’d seen in a skincare shop window on the drive over.

“Am I that scary?” she asks, sliding into the seat of his car.

“Terrifying,” he jokes. “Where to?”

She shrugs. “Wherever you want. I have a meeting in a couple hours, but I’m free until then.”

They lapse into silence. Jinyoung starts to wonder why he’d even contacted her, when they hadn’t spoken in so long. More than that, he wonders why she’d agreed to meet him.

“I don’t mean to be too direct,” Suzy says, startling him, “but you look like you don’t feel well.”

“Is that a polite way of telling me I look like shit?”

She gives him a wry smile and shrugs. “Maybe we could both use an escape for a little while,” she says softly.

So in the end they go to a movie, a cartoon that puts Jinyoung to sleep halfway through. He wakes up to Suzy shaking his arm as the credits roll, and for a suspended moment, he doesn’t know where he is. The image of future-Jaebum floats in his mind, disconnected but absolute, whispering  _ help me _ in a low tone that shudders through Jinyoung’s body.

“Jinyoung,” Suzy says, laying the back of her hand against his forehead. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says quickly. He grips the arms of his chair, bracing himself for the real world in front of him. Imagine if all of this were empty and silent in a few years, the happy families surrounding them lying in their graves.

“Maybe we’d better go get something to eat,” Suzy says.

  
  
  


After they’ve finished lunch, Suzy leans forward. “Maybe you should come to my meeting with me,” she says in a low voice, like she doesn’t want anyone else to hear. She finishes off the last of her drink, looking at him over her glass like she’s looking at a pitiful child.

“Your meeting?” Jinyoung asks.

“Not a business meeting,” Suzy says quickly. “More like—a meeting of friends. It’s a very exclusive group. I think you’d like it.”

Jinyoung frowns as her eyes dart away from his. “What kind of group?” he asks.

She doesn’t say anything. He looks up to find her looking back at him with a gleam in her eyes as she slowly stirs her straw around the ice cubes remaining in her glass. “Well,” she says, “You know how depressed I was a few years ago?”

He nods, though he doesn’t know as well as he probably should. He’d heard about it from the 2PM-hyungs, and they were very vague in their descriptions, ostensibly to protect her. Many people in their line of work ended up depressed, some severely. Though perhaps not admirable, Jinyoung had decided a long time ago to take care of those closest to him—his group, the full-time staff, and Wonpil—and not to worry about anyone else. He can’t save everyone.

“I almost overdosed on sleeping medication,” she says softly. “I woke up in the hospital and I wished I’d died instead.”

Jinyoung feels cold and distant from his own body. He’d never heard any of this, and he has no idea how he’s supposed to respond to Suzy right now. “Suzy—” he manages to squeeze out, choked by his own guilt.

“No,” she says, reaching out to cover his hand with hers. “You don’t need to say anything. I don’t feel that way anymore, and it’s because I found some really wonderful people who helped me understand that suffering doesn’t have to exist.”

Jinyoung stares at her. It takes him a minute to process her words.  _ Suffering doesn’t have to exist _ .

“What do you mean?” he asks carefully, trying to discern where this is going.

“Do you really think that the world is supposed to be like this?” she asks. “Do you think that people are supposed to die and hurt each other and give us all sorts of pain that we can never overcome? Are we really meant to suffer?”

Jinyoung turns his hand so that their palms are pressed against each other. “I’m not sure there’s any other way for the world to  _ be _ , Suzy.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, earnest. “We try to replace pain with something else but it always disappoints us, doesn’t it?”

He falls silent. He has thought of this question, of course, being a fairly sensitive person who takes solace in literature often. Jaebum has always preferred books and films that ask big questions, and Jinyoung has been following his recommendations for years, sitting with him under the philosophical musings of stories the way they might sit outside under a sea of stars.

“I think you should ask this question to someone else,” Jinyoung says. “A pastor, or a  _ sunim _ , or—”

“I  _ have _ , Jinyoung,” she says. Her eyes are luminous. “I have met the witness.”

Her words send a shiver down his spine. He has never heard of a religious teacher of any religion being called a “witness,” and he wonders briefly what Suzy has gotten mixed up in.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she scolds. She lets out a tinkling laugh. “You don’t need to worry. Just consider coming with me someday. It might help.”

“I’ll think about it,” Jinyoung says, confident that he never, ever will.


	2. Chapter 2

That evening, Jinyoung returns to the film set, his mind no less plagued by a swirling storm of thoughts. Now, in addition to trying to apply some kind of logic to his memories to determine if future-Jaebum was real or the product of an impending break with reality, Jinyoung now also has to contemplate whether he has any responsibility to pull Suzy out of what sounds like a cult.

He resolves the second question simply enough, shooting off a text to Taecyeon when he parks his car in the hotel lot. While Taecyeon has never been Suzy’s closest friend among their senior artists, he is reasonable, out of JYP Entertainment, and thus best able to execute a plan. With this matter attended to, Jinyoung turns to look at the looming hotel complex in front of him. After being away from his room, he isn’t sure he can bear to return.

He left the watch behind when he drove to Seoul. Now, he decides to apply this test: if the watch has a scratch in it, he has to begin looking for the man in the photograph. If there is no scratch, then he will have to consider admitting himself to a hospital for a psychological evaluation.

Two courses of action now decided, Jinyoung gets out of his car. The hotel is really a series of smaller buildings rising up on a picturesque hillside, made of dark stone to blend in with the trees. Each building holds several rooms, and Jinyoung’s is in one of the farthest buildings up the hill, nestled in trees. Before future-Jaebum decided to ruin his life, Jinyoung had woken each morning to enjoy a cup of coffee on the porch, listening to birds sing and watching the sun rise over the treetops. He dreads how he’ll feel each morning, now.

He shoulders his backpack and walks up the well-landscaped path to his room, passing through the beautiful hotel lobby first and giving the front desk workers a movie star smile. The two young women who are there both say hi in return, and then turn to each other with secret giggles when they think he has passed by, not realizing he can see them in the reflection of the second set of glass doors as he exits the building. It is strange that this now feels like a return to normalcy, when it used to feel like one of the strangest aspects of his life.

He muses over this as he turns up the path to his own room. With any luck, this film will propel him to a new type of stardom. He can’t imagine any type of fame being stranger than that of an idol’s, but he has vague ambitions toward Cannes, the Academy Awards, other forms of prestigious recognition an idol singer can’t imagine. If Choi Wooshik can get there, though, why not Jinyoung? These thoughts manage to keep his worries at bay as he rounds the corner of his building and goes up the stairs to the door of his room.

He jolts to a halt as he scales the last step. Leaning against the door, his legs splayed on the ground in front of him, is Jaebum.

Jinyoung rushes forward, his eyes roving over Jaebum’s limp form. This is future-Jaebum, more worse for wear than the last time. He looks up at Jinyoung and gives him a weak smile.

“You said you weren’t coming back until the KBS Gayo Daechukje,” he says, spewing words out of a heart-pounding fear.

“Something came up,” Jaebum says through gritted teeth. He lifts the hand clutching at his abdomen. It’s smeared with blood.

“Holy shit,” Jinyoung exclaims. “Hang on, I’m calling—”

Jaebum grabs the phone out of Jinyoung’s hand with his free one, surprisingly swift for an injured man. “No. No hospitals, no police.”

“But—”

“I’ve been _ shot _ , Jinyoung! Do you want to explain how a Kpop idol got shot in a country with strict gun laws? Do you want to explain to the _ other me _ what the hell is going on when he sees himself on the news?”

Jinyoung freezes. “But you’re bleeding,” he says helplessly.

“I’ll tell you what to do,” Jaebum says, his voice carrying all the authority of his leader status, plus years of experience Jinyoung knows nothing about. “Just get me inside.”

With great effort, Jinyoung manages to hoist Jaebum up with his weight on the uninjured side. Though Jaebum lets out a strangled groan, he makes no noise to draw attention to himself or bring curious people to the door. Jinyoung gets the door unlocked and helps Jaebum inside in the semi-dark.

“Not the bed,” Jaebum says through gritted teeth. “Or you’ll have to explain how you got blood on the mattress.”

Images of crazy news articles flash across Jinyoung’s mind as he changes course to the bathroom. “Do you have to be so damn practical all the time?” he asks, easing Jaebum onto the tile floor.

Jaebum chuckles, even though his eyes are screwed up with pain. In the bright light of the bathroom, Jinyoung can see that his shirt is soaked with a bloom of blood, and that Jaebum had been holding a wool scarf against his side.

“Did you time travel after getting shot?” Jinyoung asks, rushing back into the bedroom to grab a small pair of scissors he keeps for trimming his eyebrows and a sewing kit his mom gave him that he’s never used. It’s not much, but he figures he will need at least this.

“First aid kit. Check the closet,” Jaebum says when Jinyoung returns to the bathroom. “No. I got shot in this time.”

“I thought you said—” Jinyoung says, finding a first aid kit on the top shelf of the closet. He rushes back with it.

“I didn’t,” Jaebum says. “For me, our meeting at the KBS Gayo Daechukje already happened.”

Jinyoung ponders this as he cuts off the bloody remains of Jaebum’s t-shirt. He’s never considered how time travel might put everything into a scrambled mess like that. “And was I helpful?” he asks, noticing how Jaebum winces as Jinyoung moves to peel off the shirt.

“Not at all,” Jaebum says. “I’m actually really pissed at you.”

“Maybe I’ll do things differently next time.”

“Based on how you acted at our meeting, I’m guessing you won’t.”

Jinyoung doesn’t know what to say to that, so instead he takes a wet towel and begins cleaning the area of the wound.

“It’s not a bad one,” Jaebum says, though it looks terrible to Jinyoung. “The bullet passed through, and since I made it here, I don’t think it’s going to kill me.”

“You need to see a medical professional,” Jinyoung says. Cleaned, the wound still looks bad to him, though truthfully not as grisly as the bruises and cuts covering the rest of Jaebum’s torso and arms. “What the hell were you—”

“Don’t ask questions that I can’t answer,” Jaebum says. “Just do what I tell you.”

He coaches Jinyoung through the process of disinfecting the bullet wound. Then comes the highly unpleasant part of stitching it up, which bothers Jinyoung more than it seems to bother Jaebum.

“All those piercings, and you’re worried about me handling a little pain?” Jaebum asks.

“This is more than a little pain!” Jinyoung cries.

But it’s done soon enough. After applying bandages, he cleans the other wounds. His heart is still pounding, but he comes down off the adrenaline high enough to get a good look at Jaebum’s skin. Underneath the fresh wounds lie a pattern of scars Jinyoung only could have guessed at before.

Jaebum notices him looking. “You don’t want to know,” he says.

“I can guess.” Jinyoung has seen enough post-apocalyptic movies to know that what everyone supposes would come true in the event of a mass disaster actually had come true—or _ will _, to be more accurate.

Stitched and bandaged, Jaebum looks much better than he had lying at Jinyoung’s door, if a little pale.

“Can you sit up?” Jinyoung asks.

Jaebum nods. Together, they manage to get Jaebum into Jinyoung’s bed. He closes his eyes as soon as his head hits the pillow.

“Didn’t know how much I missed this,” he mumbles. “Should’ve showered, too.”

And then he’s asleep. Jinyoung checks his pulse, just to be certain. Then he stands over him, at a loss for what to do now.

Maybe it’s a stupid idea. Maybe. But, suddenly exhausted himself, Jinyoung decides there is only one option in front of him. He crawls into bed next to Jaebum, and lies just close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body. Watching him breathe, Jinyoung also falls asleep.

  
  
  
  


In the night he wakes up to what he thinks is an earthquake, and comes to consciousness just long enough to see Jaebum flicker, and then snap out of view.

  
  
  
  


He wakes again to a room filled with sunlight and an empty bed.

He sits up and rubs his eyes. His head aches and he’s starving, having not eaten dinner the night before. Slowly, he remembers _ why _, and then he looks around.

The space next to him is empty, but the indentation of another’s body is obvious. That, and the specks of blood on the sheets.

Jinyoung rubs his eyes again. If he’d wanted to believe the first meeting was a figment of his imagination, here is the evidence staring him in the face.

The memory of last night catches up with him, and he throws himself out of bed and darts to the bathroom. There, sure enough, he finds the first aid kit, its contents strewn across the floor, as well as the remnants of Jaebum’s shirt and a towel soaking in the sink. He rushes back into the main room and goes over to the end table. His watch is just where he left it.

He picks it up and examines its face. A cut stretches across the glass.

Jinyoung sinks to the ground. It’s all real, all of it, and now he has to wait weeks until the KBS Gayo Daechukje, assuming Jaebum doesn’t show up again between now and then. And assuming he isn’t dead. What if his friends in the future pulled him back there, just so he wouldn’t die stranded in another time?

It’s all too much. Overwhelmed, Jinyoung puts his face into his hands, the watch pressed against his forehead, and begins to sob.

  
  
  


It’s an understatement to say that Jinyoung struggles on set.

He knows it’s going to be a bad day when he sits for makeup and the person assigned to him immediately frowns and says, “hmm.” She spends over an hour making him look like he has no makeup on, and manages to conceal most of the dark circles under his eyes, but she can’t do much to change his mood. Every time he stands still, he thinks about the blood pouring out of Jaebum’s body, and wishes he could be anywhere else besides work. But he is at work, so he looks at the makeup caked onto his face and tells himself under his breath, “pull yourself together.” The makeup artist gives him a sidelong glance, but she doesn’t say anything.

The scene they are filming today is an emotional one between Jinyoung’s character and his father. This scene is at the heart of the film, and Jinyoung has been determined to nail it ever since he received the script. As he sees it, this is his chance to give Choi Wooshik some real competition. He tries to keep this in mind as he walks to set and reviews his lines.

“Jinyoung,” someone says behind him as he tries to focus on the words swimming in front of his eyes. He turns and finds the film’s director standing there, frowning at him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jinyoung says quickly, smoothing his face into a smile. “Just reviewing my lines.”

“You don’t look well,” the director says, then shrugs. He has a cigarette in one hand and flicks a few embers off. “Do you think you can do a reshoot of scene thirty-four quickly?”

“Of course,” Jinyoung says, frantically trying to remember what that scene includes. The director nods and walks away, and Jinyoung flips through his script to the scene. As soon as he sees it, he blanches. It’s the scene where his character’s best friend returns from the war injured and bleeding.

He’s in trouble. But he tries to keep himself calm as he enters the set, really an outdoor area surrounding an old-fashioned country house they’ve been using for all exterior shots. He sees the other actor’s back across the set, and then the other actor turns around, and his face is covered in blood. Jinyoung begins to tremble.

It’s just fake blood, and he knows that, but he can’t stop thinking about time-traveling Jaebum. The idiot had refused a hospital and had Jinyoung stitch him together, and he’d probably _ die _ because of it. A world without Jaebum—even a Jaebum from a distant future—seems utterly unbearable. The universe should collapse in on itself if Jaebum dies. Jinyoung can not bear to even consider it.

He becomes aware that someone is calling his name. Slowly, he turns around and discovers one of the production assistants frantically waving at him. It’s time.

But he can’t shake his daze. He flubs every line for multiple takes. He’s dimly aware that his co-star is staring at him in disbelief, but every time he glances at the guy’s face, he sees Jaebum instead.

“Take five!” 

The director comes over. He asks a question. Jinyoung seems to answer, but he’s not quite aware of what he says. And he can’t stop shaking.

An hour later, his manager comes to find him. “They’ve suggested you go see a doctor,” his manager says. “Jinyoung, what’s wrong?”

Jinyoung laughs lightly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he says.

His manager gives him a look that Jinyoung can’t place immediately. After a moment, though, it dawns on him what the look means.

“_ Not _ drugs,” Jinyoung says quickly. “Just—other things.”

Because this manager has only been working with him for a few months, and only during his acting work, his skeptical expression doesn’t really change. Not that it matters, though. If Jinyoung told the truth, everyone would _ assume _ drugs, so it all comes out to be the same in the end. 

This thought strikes him as very funny, and he begins to laugh. He just chuckles to himself, but the feeling overwhelms him, and he begins to laugh out loud. As his body begins to shake, his manager grabs him by the arm.

“Come on,” he hisses. “Maybe you really should see a doctor.”

  
  
  
  


And so, Jinyoung finds himself on another impromptu vacation. He is dimly aware that his grasp on reality has become tenuous at best, but he can’t really summon the desire to care anymore. His manager drives them both back to Seoul, and this time, Jinyoung falls asleep with his head against the window. He dreams of blood and, oddly, of sitting in an airplane seat, watching clouds float past his window.

“Listen, Jinyoung,” says his manager when they arrive outside his apartment. He stops talking long enough to light a cigarette. “I didn’t want to tell you this before, but I guess I’ve got to.”

“What is it?” Jinyoung asks. His manager offers him the pack of cigarettes, but Jinyoung refuses. He’s never been interested in cultivating habits that could harm his stardom, and he still isn’t now, even if he’d like something to take the edge off his nerves.

“If you can’t get back to one hundred percent by next week, they’re going to replace you. I’m sorry.”

Jinyoung sits quietly, staring at his hands. Up until this moment, his only objective has been to do his best possible work in this film and use it to catapult him into the next stage of his career. But it doesn’t matter, not really. The world is going to end and Jinyoung is going to be stuck watching. Who cares if he gets replaced on a stupid movie? Does he, anymore?

But he knows his duty. “I’ll call a counselor tomorrow,” he says.

“Okay,” his manager agrees.

Jinyoung moves to get out of the car, slinging his duffel over his shoulder.

“Jinyoung?”

Jinyoung looks up. His manager is strangely contemplative, cigarette hanging between his two fingers as he frowns in Jinyoung’s direction. He’s handsome, and might have been a celebrity himself, if the cards had been dealt in his favor. But not everyone makes it.

“Just—get better,” he says gruffly.

“I will,” Jinyoung says, surprised by this display of affection. He has had that effect on people, though, and after all these years he should be used to it. He’d won over Jaebum, hadn’t he? And even he had thought that was an impossible task. And yet he’d won over Jaebum enough for him to defy the rules of space and time to see him again.

He steps through the doors of the building. The overwhelming feeling of deja vu cements his feet to the tile floor of the lobby. He stares at the lights in the ceiling until halos begins to form around them. The security guard says something to him. Jinyoung answers, though he’s not sure what he says. “Better go sleep it off,” says the security guard with a chuckle.

This sounds like a good proposition. Jinyoung shuffles into the elevator and watches the numbers light up as it rises to the upper floors. He tries to imagine this building without electricity or people inside, a shell of what it is now, and can’t. All he can imagine is Jaebum’s wounds that he so inexpertly stitched up. What if now Jaebum is—will be—dead? He can’t bear to think of it.

He walks into his apartment, removes his shoes, and collapses on his couch. Now that he’s thought of it, he can’t push the image of Jaebum out of his mind. He wants to call him up, the present Jaebum, but he knows he would superimpose the future Jaebum onto the current one and ruin everything. His Jaebum, the one in the present, would definitely do everything in his power to get Jinyoung removed from his movie and treated by the best medical professionals if he heard that Jinyoung thinks he’s been visited by a man from the future. And yet there’s no option to disbelieve this, not for Jinyoung, not anymore. He can’t escape this truth.

As he drifts to sleep, Suzy’s words echo like a resounding bell in his head. _ Do you really think that the world is supposed to be like this? _

  
  
  
  


There’s no real reason why he contacts Suzy the next morning, except he can’t get her question out of his head. And he’d promised his manger he’d call someone, hadn’t he? As far as he can see, Suzy’s offer to go to her weird cult meeting is at least equal to calling up a counseling service, if not better. Surely a cult is more likely to accept his story of a time-traveler and impending apocalypse.

Suzy practically croons over the phone. “Oh, Jinyoung,” she says, “I know you’ll appreciate them. They talk like you, you know?”

“Like what? Are they as charmingly pessimistic as me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. But, sure, philosophical. The Witness has real plans for the future. He’s seen it.”

Jinyoung almost drops his phone. “I’m sorry—what?”

“I can’t tell you more right now,” she sighs. “Just meet me in two hours, ok?”

He agrees and hangs up quickly. Sinking down onto his couch, he runs a shaky hand through his hair and takes several deep breaths. _ He’s seen it. _ What could that mean, except that Jaebum is not alone in traveling through time? Maybe the Witness is the man in the photograph, and everything is now coming together, the streams of fate turning into a river surging into the ocean of irony.

He pulls out his phone. To his surprise, the KBS Gayo Daechukje is only a week away now, its calendar event highlighted in green. He’s been so distracted that he never even realized how quickly time has been passing by him. After his hosting gig, he’ll either return to finish his film, or he won’t. The fans will be devastated if he falls apart, but who cares if they’re all damned anyway?

These are the thoughts occupying his mind as he goes to pick Suzy up in the parking garage beneath her apartment building. She looks thrilled to see him, and gives brisk directions as they pull back out onto the sun-soaked street.

“What made you change your mind?” She asks when they come up to a red light. “You seemed very—well, disdainful, when I told you about them before.”

He gives her a thin smile. “There’s a lot going on,” he says carefully. “Jaebum—”

“Ah.” Her eyebrows lift and she looks out the windshield, lips twisted into an odd sort of smile. “I see.”

“See what?”

“I told you that we could live in a world without suffering,” she says. “Of course your mind went there.”

“Where?”

“To _ him. _ Don’t be coy with me, Park Jinyoung. I’ve known you too long.”

He rolls his eyes. The light turns green and he hits the gas, a little harder than necessary.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks.

He sighs, stopping to rub his brow. “Not really. What’s there to talk about?”

“It might do you good.”

If anyone is likely to accept his story as truth, he figures Suzy might. But he doesn’t say anything, instead clenching his teeth and following her directions in silence. The fact that Jaebum might be dead already in some distant future is bad enough, but to add to it, he feels shame for his unrequited feelings. And he can’t tell Suzy that. She’d—probe. Want him to examine everything lying under his skin. She might not be the smartest person he’s ever met, but her keen intuition has always made her a formidable force against his carefully curated fancy outer shell.

They arrive outside an expensive hotel soon after. Jinyoung pays the valet, and then follows Suzy inside the lobby, where the bellhops greet her warmly. He doesn’t see anyone in weird cloaks or funny ties as they enter the elevator and take it up a few floors, where they exit to a lavishly decorated conference hall. A sign proclaims in gilded letters: _ International Society of Preservation and Innovation Convention. _

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asks, nodding at the sign.

“Don’t be crass,” Suzy says. “Come on.”

He expects either awkwardly enthusiastic men dressed up like they’re going to a board meeting, or cauldrons out of _ Harry Potter _. Instead, the room is filled with well-dressed people who look like they’ve all come in from countries around the world. The room is warm with the melody of various languages and styles of laughter. Suzy gives him a smirk, and pulls him along to the cocktail bar on the far end.

“Isn’t it a little early for—” he starts to say, and then Suzy taps a man on the shoulder.

He turns around. It’s the man from the photograph.

“This is Son Youngho,” Suzy is saying, but to Jinyoung she sounds very far away.

In person, the man from the photograph does not appear formidable in any way. He is Jinyoung’s height, but otherwise seems to recede from the eye, like he’s constantly escaping notice. His eyes have a watery look to them, and he stops several times to clean his glasses.

“And he’s the architect,” Suzy finishes, glancing back at Jinyoung. “Are you okay?”

“The Witness?” Jinyoung asks, his voice hoarse.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Son Youngho says quickly, waving his glasses in the air. “I could never step into his shoes. No one can.”

“He’s the _ architect _,” Suzy repeats, placing a hand on Jinyoung’s arm. “He’s very important.”

“But not the Witness, of course,” Son Youngho says quickly.

“Of course,” Suzy laughs melodiously and hands Jinyoung a glass of champagne. “But you will make his vision possible.”

“I’ll try,” Son Youngho says with a nervous laugh.

Suzy pushes Jinyoung back into the crowd. “What’s wrong with you?” she says under her breath. “Son Youngho is a well-respected scientist who the Witness has _ entrusted _—”

“I need some air,” Jinyoung cuts her off.

She lets him go. He wanders down the marble floors to a lavish bathroom, where he locks himself in a stall and takes slow, deep breaths. According to Jaebum, the plague begins with Son Youngho. No—according to _ Jinyoung _. Some future version of himself.

It occurs to him then that he hadn’t even thought to chat with this man, even though he is his one mission. And then it occurs to him that he is still holding his glass of champagne. He downs it quickly—might as well—and returns to the reception hall. To his surprise, it is now only halfway full. He finds Suzy standing near the doors.

“We’re about to go in,” she says.

Jinyoung loosens his ties and uses the motion to lean closer. “Did you say Son Youngho was a virologist?” he asks quietly, so as not to be overheard.

Suzy gives him a look. “No. I’m not sure what he does, but he’s definitely not in medicine. A physicist, maybe?”

They take their seats in the conference hall. The room quiets immediately.

The first hour or so is incredibly boring, like a motivational self-help conference. Different speakers talk about how to make a better life, how to cope with hardship, how to accept the inevitability of aging. Just as he is starting to drift off, Suzy pinches him.

“He’s here,” she says.

A different kind of hush falls over the room. Whereas before, the people had been respectfully patient, now they wait with bated breath, all eyes on the stage.

A man walks out in a cloak and a mask. The mask, a traditional _ tal _, is painted with a laughing face. The room erupts in applause.

The man holds up his hands. Every inch of him is covered, even his hands, which are encased in black gloves. There is no way to discern who this man is, but by the way everyone is on the edge of their seats, it’s obvious that this is—finally—the Witness.

“You have waited for me,” he says. His voice, slightly distorted by the microphone, nevertheless carries through the room in a clear, piercing tone. “I am humbled.”

More applause. Suzy claps eagerly.

“You are all here because you have suffered. All of us have suffered greatly, watching our loved ones grow old and die, or be snatched from us by violence or disease of the body or mind. You have dared to love only to have time take away from you that which you loved with your whole heart. And one day, time will take away from you the most precious thing of all: your own life.”

Now the room is completely silent. Even Jinyoung finds himself leaning forward, somehow desperate to hear what this man has to say.

“The aching of your hearts and your bones has been regarded by the whole of human history as inevitable. Fated. But it is only because no one dared to name the true enemy.”

The Witness pauses, turning so the whole crowd can stare into the _ tal’s _ amused eyes. “And who is the enemy?”

The crowd answers in a mass whisper. “Time,” they all say. The word echoes around Jinyoung.

“And so Time must be held accountable for its crimes!” The Witness lifts his hands. So he’s a showman, an idol without the pretty face. But the crowd is enraptured, and Jinyoung’s heart is beating hard.

“With the help of our scientists and spiritual leaders, we have unlocked the secret of Time’s weakness, and we will break it.Then, where the forest is dark, we will be reunited with our loved ones in the eternal now, like a Phoenix rising from its own ashes. No more death. No more pain. Only now.”

“Only now,” says the crowd. _ Only now _.

“I have witnessed Time’s end!” says the man on the stage. “And I have returned to tell you that at the edge of forever is our final triumph! When we break Time, we will rise to finally reclaim what is our right: the chance to live forever in happiness. The Witness has spoken!”

The crowd leaps to its feet. “The Witness has spoken!” they shout.

Jinyoung stands so as not to be noticed. Standing, he can see the Witness clearly. The mask’seyes seem to bore directly into his soul.

_ The Witness has spoken. _


	3. Chapter 3

“So you’re just not going back to your film?”

Jackson leans against the make-up table with his arms folded over his chest and a deep frown crossing his face. The movement makes some of the bottles clatter together, and Jinyoung spots their make-up artist frowning in the mirror.

“I still want to,” Jinyoung says.

“You’ve never experienced anxiety before. Not like you’re describing.” Jackson gestures in the air, his whole form carefully arranged in the image of a celebrity. But Jinyoung can see genuine concern under the surface, the desperate kind that knits them all together. It’s difficult when you have access to all kinds of money and temptations and no way to save anyone.

“Not like this,” Jinyoung agrees.

“So what triggered it?”

Jinyoung glances again at the reflection of their make-up artist, who is obviously listening but not intruding on the conversation. Across the room, he can see Jaebum—the current one—having his hair styled. This has put him on edge, because the Jaebum from the future had claimed that he would not perform at all.

“Just stuff,” Jinyoung says carefully.

“Stuff?” Jackson sighs, moving to rub his forehead and then stopping before he actually touches his make-up. He grins at the make-up artist, who must be glaring at him behind Jinyoung’s head. “Don’t bullshit me, Park Jinyoung.”

“I’m not.”

“Is it,” Jackson asks, inclining his head in the direction of Jaebum. “You know.”

Jinyoung puts on a befuddled expression. “I don’t know.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Jackson sighs. “Of course you—”

But he stops, his eyes snapping to the other side of the room. Suddenly there’s a commotion, and the make-up artist stops applying Jinyoung’s eyeliner mid line. He swivels in his chair just in time to see Jaebum curled on the floor, before his view is obstructed by a dozen staff rushing to the scene.

Jinyoung leaps out of his chair at the same time as Jackson begins running across the room. Together they push through the small crowd around Jaebum. Jinyoung throws himself to the ground, leaning in close to get a better look at Jaebum’s face. He’s in agony, curled around himself, sweat beading on his brow.

“I’m fine,” he insists through gritted teeth. Jinyoung pushes his hair off his forehead and looks up at their manager.

“He has appendicitis,” he says, too confidently. “Or, this reminds me of when my sister had it.”

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” Jaebum insists.

“You’re not,” Jinyoung says. Jaebum’s head feels clammy and hot under his hand. “You’ve got to go to the emergency room.”

“I just need a minute—” Jaebum says, but then Jackson leans down beside him.

“Can you stand?” he asks.

Jaebum groans. “Just leave me here for a few minutes and I’ll be fine.”

Jinyoung and Jackson exchange glances. Jackson gives a slight roll of his eyes.

“I’ve already called for an ambulance,” says their manager, ignoring Jaebum moaning  _ no _ on the floor. “I know you don’t want the publicity, Jaebum, but you’ve got to go get this checked out.”

“Your appendix could burst and then you’d really be out of commission for a while,” Jinyoung says.

“Or dead,” Jackson says. He notices Jinyoung glaring at him and mouths  _ what? _

Their other members come into the room and rush to join them. Jinyoung maintains physical contact with Jaebum the whole time they wait for the emergency medical team, which feels like an eternity. Having just stitched up bleeding bullet wounds in Jaebum’s body, he didn’t expect to be so troubled by Jaebum writhing on the floor like this. But the time-traveling Jaebum is jaded and hardy, and this Jaebum seems strangely soft and fragile by comparison. Jinyoung wishes he could gather Jaebum up in his arms and hold him so close that time would just stop, right there, the two of them safe from all harm.

Finally the emergency medical team arrives and takes over. Within minutes, Jaebum is transported out of the building, leaving the remaining six members to figure out how to rearrange their performance in about three hours.

“It’s fortunate for Jaebum that you saw your sister had appendicitis, huh?” Jackson says. “Probably saved him a lot of time.”

Jinyoung nods, but really, he’s already thinking about the moment when he encounters the Jaebum from the future. As always, everything is panning out exactly as he promised.

  
  
  
  


There’s hardly any time to process Jaebum’s medical emergency before they’re whisked into group rehearsals for a modified performance. Jinyoung already has his suit on for hosting, but joins in anyway.

“You seem,” Mark says while they’re waiting for the sound team to fix something. He frowns. “Weirdly okay.”

Jinyoung looks up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well.” Mark licks his lips and cracks his neck, sliding a glance in Youngjae’s direction before his eyes dart back to Jinyoung’s. “You know, we’ve been hearing things, even if you haven’t said them.”

“Okay.”

“And now Jaebum was just rushed to the hospital, but you seem—fine.”

“He’s going to be fine,” Jinyoung says firmly.

“I’m sure he is,” Mark agrees, taking a few steps to the right to resume his starting position in the song. “But that’s not the point.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“Nevermind.”

Confused, Jinyoung goes through abridged motions for his parts. He’d been given nearly half of Jaebum’s lines, and he sings them absently, trying not to dwell on anything except the stage lights blinding his eyes. He’s sure Jaebum will be okay, but what about his future self, the one who was shot? How is he? It’s like Jinyoung has a thousand worries, now, as he perceives Jaebum at all points in time equally in jeopardy of death and illness. The process of living beside someone in time gives an apparently false perception that you only need to worry about the present and the unknown future, but what if the future  _ is _ the present, every moment holding equal weight and equal possibility of loss?

“Jinyoung!”

He snaps to attention as Bambam actually snaps his fingers in front of his face.

“What the hell dude?” Bambam asks.

Everyone is looking at him. It takes Jinyoung far too long to realize that he’d completely skipped over his own lines, instead dancing on autopilot without any sense that something was off.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, forgetting to reprimand Bambam for his rudeness. “I got distracted.”

Everyone is still looking at him. He smooths back his hair, and forces himself to keep going.

  
  
  
  


He’s on the lookout for Jaebum everywhere he goes. He expects to find him lurking in shadows backstage, furtive and dangerous, a man lost in time. But the broadcast progresses as planned: that is, without interruptions from time-traveling apparitions. Somehow, Jinyoung manages to say all his lines with a charming smile, and no one gives him weird looks when he goes off-stage during the commercial break. If he were acting strangely, Irene, his perpetual hosting partner, would certainly tell him—and as her facial expression hasn’t changed since they left the view of the camera, he can safely assume he is pulling off the appearance of sanity.

“Jinyoung,” someone hisses.

Jinyoung turns around in the dark, and finds Jaebum exactly where he expected: lurking in the shadows. His heart leaps in an odd sort of excitement, and begins pounding hard.

“I need to talk to you,” Jaebum says.

“Yeah, me too,” Jinyoung says, stepping out of hearing range of the other people crowded around the dark waiting area. “Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah, I’m fine.” Jaebum looks very clearly confused.

“You were hurt badly.”

Jaebum gives him an odd look. “It’s just appendicitis. I was fine.”

Suddenly, Jinyoung remembers what Jaebum had said when he appeared outside his hotel: that he had  _ already _ met Jinyoung here and now, and traveled back in time. Which means that Jaebum might be shot at any time  _ after _ this, and—

“Hey,” Jaebum says, grabbing Jinyoung by the arm. “Are you okay? Are you going to faint?”

Jinyoung doesn’t know what to say, instead leaning into Jaebum. Jaebum scans the room.

“You’ve got what, fifteen minutes before you’re back on standby? Let’s get some air.” He shakes his head as he moves to pull Jinyoung away. “Wow, that feels weird to say. This all feels weird.”

“You’re telling me.”

“So I guess you’ve accepted it then?” Jaebum asks, crooking a small grin in Jinyoung’s direction. “The time travel and all?”

His playfulness takes Jinyoung off-guard. He doesn’t know what to say, and keeps quiet, letting Jaebum navigate through the halls. “This is so weird,” he keeps muttering, but Jinyoung doesn’t know how he’s supposed to comfort him as he witnesses everything he’s already lost. He can’t even comprehend that idea.

They exit out a back door to a loading dock, which is thankfully empty. Jaebum goes to lean against the wall, where he is able to look out at the night sky. “Huh,” he says.

“What?”

“That’s the one thing that’s gotten better,” Jaebum says. “Where I come from, I can see the stars.”

Jinyoung tries to wrap his brain around that. “You come from  _ here _ .” He doesn’t know why he feels so strongly about this, but he can feel anger rising up as heat on his neck.

Jaebum, though, looks at him calmly. “Okay. Yes, you’re right. I come from here. But this is all a memory to me, Jinyoung. I’m just walking through a graveyard.”

Jinyoung gapes at him. Somehow, Jaebum’s pained expression doesn’t make his heart ache the way it has in his previous appearances. “I’m just a memory to you?” he demands. “I am  _ here _ . I am living this  _ now _ . And you’re treating it like a video game or something?”

“That’s not—”

“I’ve spent the last week not knowing if you’re dead or alive—” Jinyoung blurts out, and abruptly stops himself. “I—I don’t know if I should tell you. Paradoxes, right?”

Jaebum blinks, his brow furrowing as he tries to process what Jinyoung just said. “Yes,” he says. “I need to be careful not to tell you what happens. No one really understands how time  _ works _ , I think. I’m traveling blind. And if you’ve met a future version of me—you can’t tell me.”

Jinyoung fists his hands in the pockets of his slacks, now shivering a little. “You mean to tell me that I have to just deal with the unknown when maybe I could do something to save you?”

Jaebum laughs. “You are living with the unknown? Jinyoung, you  _ don’t understand. _ ”

“I think you owe me more than that!”

Jaebum looks away from him. “Well,” he says in a low voice, one Jinyoung recognizes as dangerous. “Frankly, I don’t give a shit. I have one mission, and it’s not about me, it’s about everybody. Maybe that seems crazy to you, but I already buried you.”

He turns and pushes a fist against the concrete wall, miming hitting it without actually hurting himself. His face is contorted with pain, a different kind of pain than Jinyoung has seen him suffer recently.

“I buried you  _ years _ ago,” Jaebum whispers, something desperate in his eyes. “I’m—I’m talking with a ghost right now. I’ve buried  _ everyone _ we ever knew.”

He runs a hand over his face. “Shit. I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of that. Shit.”

Jinyoung leans against the wall, too weak to stand. Of course, if Jaebum would come here to find him and ask him a question, Jinyoung had to  _ assume _ that he might himself be dead in the future, but—well, he hadn’t really contemplated it. That was a line of conjecture much too strange for him to even conceive of, much less follow. Jaebum obviously hadn’t meant to tell him any of this.

“Who’s still—with you?” Jinyoung asks in a shaky voice.

Jaebum looks up at him, like he’s trying to see past cloudy eyes. “Um,” he says, his brow furrowing. He seems to return to the present. “Wonpil. Tzuyu. Choi Hyunwoo—from, uh, accounting. And his wife. Kim Sooyoung, one of the backup dancers from our tour, uh—the one that starts next month.”

Jinyoung waits, watching Jaebum carefully. He opens his mouth again, like he’s going to continue to list names, but stops himself.

“That’s it?” Jinyoung prompts, careful to speak gently.

“Mark and Yugyeom were in California, so they could be alive. I don’t know.”

“What about—”

“Youngjae died two years ago, when the virus mutated. Your family died a few months before him. Bambam tried to get out of the country about a year after—everything, to find his family. So I don’t know.”

Jinyoung lets this information sit heavy on his shoulders for a moment. The years between the two of them now seem like a much deeper and wider gulf than he’d realized. All of this, Jaebum has suffered without Jinyoung there beside them, after they’d sworn to do everything together. Jinyoung had failed him in this—or will fail him, depending on your point of view.

“Jackson?” Jinyoung asks in a hoarse voice.

“He got on a plane to Beijing a couple of days before the borders closed,” Jaebum says. He shrugs, helpless. “I don’t know.”

Jinyoung doesn’t know what to say. There is no comfort he can offer, so instead he decides to press forward and ask for the last piece of information he isn’t entirely sure he wants.

“And me?” he asks.

Jaebum stares at him for a long moment before he answers. Jinyoung tries not to squirm under his gaze, but in the end, he can’t maintain that kind of eye contact. It feels like Jaebum is staring into his soul, and not in a romantic way. More like he can see through him, into the past, and sum up his existence in a few brief lines.

Then he sighs. “You died in a plane crash, before the virus started spreading. So at least I didn’t have to watch you—succumb, like my mother. Looking back, the pilot of your flight must have had one of the first cases of the virus, though we didn’t know it at the time. We just knew you crashed. We suspended our tour, mourned you. And then everything went to shit.”

Jinyoung nods slowly. “I see.”

“You don’t,” Jaebum says, not unkindly. His every words comes out heavy and grief-laden. “But I don’t expect you to.”

Jinyoung swallows. He can’t even imagine his own 

death, however Jaebum might paint the picture for him. “How did you survive?”

“I’m immune,” Jaebum says, with a helpless shrug. “Some of us have to go on living, I guess. But the virus is mutating, so who knows how much longer we have before everyone is gone.”

“And then?” Jinyoung asks.

Jaebum leans against the concrete wall, his eyes once again on the night sky. “I guess the planet keeps turning. I don’t know. I don’t plan on failing this mission, but I guess I wouldn’t be alive to find out.”

“What happens if you succeed?”

Jaebum’s eyebrows lift. “Well. We think everything would just—reset. And be erased. Like it never happened. And I’d forget living through hell, because it would never happen.”

They stand in silence for a moment. Jinyoung doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, but on impulse he reaches out and takes hold of Jaebum’s hand, interlacing their fingers together slowly. His fingers run over more scars in the process. To his surprise, Jaebum responds by grabbing hold tightly.

Then he lets go, resuming an aura of business. “Did you find him?” he asks.

“Who?”

Jaebum almost growls, obviously irritated. “The man in the photo! Who else?”

Jinyoung opens his mouth, ready to tell him about Suzy and the cult and the Witness and how the man in the photo might be important, but he doesn’t know in what way yet. But for some reason, he hesitates for a split second.

In that split second, a car peels into the loading dock, screeching across the concrete. In a flash, someone leans out of the window and shoots at Jaebum.

Three gunshots echo through the garage. Instinctively, Jinyoung ducks, covering his head and ears. He hears another shot close by. He looks up and sees Jaebum staggering over, a gun in his own hand, as the car races away.

“I’ve been shot,” Jaebum says.

Jinyoung moves to grab him as he falls. Jaebum is too busy fumbling for something in his pocket to notice the blood beginning to seep through his shirt. He finds it, and then stabs what looks like an Epi-pen into his arm.

Just like that, he flickers and snaps out of view.

A door behind Jinyoung slams open. “What the hell?” someone asks.

Jinyoung stares at the empty loading dock in disbelief. “I don’t know,” he says.

  
  
  
  
  


He does not return to finish hosting the show. Instead, he gets a three hour session with the police, as they try to figure out who shot at him and why.

Jinyoung answers their questions as honestly as he can considering that he can’t tell them the truth about anything. By the end, they’re convinced that some crazed fans have tried to kill Jinyoung, and they put out a press release saying so. They’re far more concerned by the fact that fans had access to guns than Jinyoung is, and he has to remind himself to act horrified at this attempt on his life.

By the time he leaves the police station, it’s two in the morning and his phone is blowing up with text messages. He can only imagine how the Internet is receiving the news that he was shot at—by rogue “fans” nonetheless—but where once he would have been frantically combing the news to see how the fallout of this would impact his career, now he only cares to figure out who  _ really _ shot at Jaebum, and how they knew he was there, and why? He knows what will happen to Jaebum next: he goes to the past and Jinyoung stitches him up and then Jaebum disappears to who knows when. Hopefully, he’s still alive whenever he ended up.

Jinyoung doesn’t know where to start looking for answers, though. From what the police said, they had hardly any leads, which makes Jinyoung wonder why they said it was fans when it clearly wasn’t. He falters in his steps, and he spins on his heels to look back at the police station, suddenly suspicious.

But that’s a flawed line of thought as well. Would someone really pay off the police to keep an attempted murder of a time-traveler a secret? Who would buy that?

He can’t tease an answer from this knot of questions, so he decides to pursue the only lead he has—Son Youngho. “The Architect.”

He pulls out his phone to text Suzy, but there is a message on his screen from Jaebum. He jerks back, thinking it’s the future Jaebum. But he calms down when he realizes it’s obviously the current one— _ his _ Jaebum—texting him from the hospital.

_ Are you ok? You’re all over the news. _

He texts back immediately, reassuring Jaebum that he’s fine and asking to come visit. Jaebum texts back the address of the hospital and his room number, and Jinyoung hails a cab, having already forgotten his previous mission.

His mind is like a radio station playing only static for the whole drive to the hospital. He is roused, briefly, from his hazy mind when he hears an actual radio station’s report on the incident with “Got7’s Park Jinyoung.” 

_ During the broadcast of the KBS Gayo Daechukje, Got7’s Park Jinyoung stepped outside of the studio and was shot at by an unknown person riding in an unregistered van. Local police have attributed this incident to the idol’s anti-fans, though many people are already asking why his anti-fans chose such an extreme act of violence, and how they accessed the resources— _

“Can you turn that off?” Jinyoung asks. The taxi driver gives him an odd look in the rear view mirror, but obliges.

“Idols get mixed up in everything, don’t they?” he asks gruffly.

“Yes,” Jinyoung agrees.

“You can’t look that good on the outside without your soul rotting on the inside,” the driver continues.

“I suppose so,” Jinyoung says.

They arrive at the hospital. Jinyoung pays the driver and then rushes through the building and up to Jaebum’s private room. His steps slow as he approaches the door, which is just cracked open, letting a small bar of light slip out. Jinyoung pushes the door open slowly.

“You awake?” Jinyoung asks.

Jaebum is stretched out in the hospital bed, frowning up at the television. Jinyoung hears his own name echo thinly through the speakers.

Jaebum turns his head to look at him. “What the fuck happened?”

Jinyoung closes the door behind himself and enters the room. “It’s not important.”

“Not important? Someone shot at you—”

“Well, you could have  _ died.” _

“Me? What about you?”

“It wasn’t anything,” Jinyoung says with a wave of his hand. “A freak accident. You can’t believe the media.”

Jaebum’s eyebrows lift in disbelief. He turns off the television and tosses the remote onto the table beside him, letting it clatter and hit the wall. “I guess I should have expected you to try to upstage me.”

Jinyoung snorts, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. He tries to suppress his smile. “That’s right,” he says, laughing a little. “You went and got appendicitis on my big night.”

Jaebum rolls his eyes, but he laughs, his smile wide and beautiful. No one has pulled back his hair and it hangs in his face, long and shiny, so unlike what he will become. The smile is the same, though.

“What is it?” Jaebum asks.

“Nothing,” Jinyoung says quickly. He sits down on the end of the bed, careful not to jostle Jaebum so soon after his surgery.

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

Of course Jaebum can read him so easily. If only Jinyoung could tell him the truth, get his input and wisdom. But he can’t tell the truth—it would be crazy, and paradoxical besides. Not an option.

But Jinyoung is, first and foremost, an idiot. So he takes the most idiotic option before him. He looks at Jaebum, reclined on his pillows and ethereally attractive in the harsh hospital lighting, pale from his recent surgery but otherwise the most beautiful person Jinyoung has ever seen. And will ever see. Present or future, he will always love Jaebum, in spite of how it destroys him inside.

He finally acts on his imagination, leans forward, and kisses Jaebum.

It is exactly like he imagined and it isn’t. Jaebum’s mouth is still underneath his, but he doesn’t move to answer Jinyoung’s question. He remains motionless, his breath warm on Jinyoung’s lips. After a long moment, Jinyoung leans back. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

“Ah,” Jaebum says, like that’s the thing to say.

Jinyoung leaps to his feet. “I should go—”

“Jinyoung.”

“Sorry, I—yeah, I should go.”

“Jinyoung!”

Jaebum speaks sharply. Jinyoung’s attention snaps back to him like a rubber band.

“You know it’s not that easy. Jinyoung.”

“But why not?” Jinyoung demands. His words come out of him like an avalanche, unstoppable and destructive. “You know—you have to know—how I feel about you! How I’ve felt!”

Jaebum looks down at his hands. “I suspected.”

“Then tell me why not?” Jinyoung cries out. “Do you not feel anything in return? Did I just imagine the last decade of our lives?”

“Jinyoung, you know—you know that not everything that happens on stage is real.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about! And you know it!” Jinyoung pulls on his hair, frustrated. “Everything that happens on stage kills me. I hate it. I only did it because—” He falters.

“It was all you had,” Jaebum says.

It sounds pathetic. Jinyoung falls into the plastic chair beside the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, determined to make Jaebum understand. “There’s no one else but you. There’s only you. What am I supposed to  _ do _ ?”

Jaebum shakes his head. The movement stans into Jinyoung’s heart.

“We have too much to lose,” Jaebum says. “It’s not worth it.”

“None of it is worth anything!” Jinyoung cries. “I would give up all the fame and fortune—”

“You wouldn’t, though,” Jaebum says, peering at Jaebum. “You know that’s not true, don’t you? We’ve always loved the work more than anything else. Even each other.”

It’s more of a concession than Jinyoung expected Jaebum to make. He closes his eyes, leaning forward to rest his head against the blankets. After a moment, he feels Jaebum’s hand press gently against his head.

“Life is too short to lose so much for something that might not be as good as you hope,” Jaebum says softly. “And it wouldn’t be as good as you hope.”

“You don’t know that,” Jinyoung says, but he knows he’s already lost this fight.

After all, this has all happened before. He realizes that, and feels cold, but doesn’t move, preferring to sit there while Jaebum gently strokes his hair, the only confirmation of affection he knows he’ll ever get. Because he’s heard from the future, and he future, and he knows how this ends.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

Jinyoung finds out two days later that he has, in effect, been fired from his film. “Psychological distress,” they call it. It is certainly the most reasonable course of action to take after he behaved erratically on set for weeks and garnered extensive news coverage for being shot at by unknown assailants. Jinyoung should feel anger, sadness, or  _ something _ when his manager calls him a few hours before the press release goes out, but all he feels is relief. He hasn’t wanted to leave his apartment for the past two days, preferring to languish in his heartache, unable to process the numerous corkscrew turns his life has recently taken.

“Jinyoung?” His manager’s voice on the other end of the line draws him out of his thoughts.

“Okay,” he says into the phone.

“Jinyoung,” says his manager. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Great,” Jinyoung says. “Fine.”

“Take care of yourself, Jinyoung,” says his manager, and then he hangs up. Jinyoung turns off his phone and takes a long nap.

When he wakes up, it’s dusk, just like when Jaebum first came to him from the future. He steps out onto the balcony to look at the deep blue sky, trying to create a perfect picture of Jaebum in his mind. He tries to conjure the image of the current one, lying on the hospital bed with his hair fanned on the pillow, but all he can think of is the time-traveling one, bleeding out on his bathroom floor. It’s strange how they seem like almost different people, but each of them has equal pull on his heart. Now that he’s been rejected by Jaebum, he keeps hoping that the other one will appear in front of him and explain everything away. In some foolish corner of his mind he wishes that Jaebum would take refuge from the apocalypse here, in this time, with  _ him _ , though on some level he knows that a Jaebum who has suffered enormous loss and violence could never truly be happy. But at least he’d be alive, and safe. And they’d be together.

His thoughts drift to the Witness. His ridiculous promise of “eternal now” looms in Jinyoung’s mind like a mountain range in the distance, easy to ignore but breathtaking when he does look at it. Imagine if it were true. Of course it’s not true, but if it were—if there were a version of reality without “too much to lose”—would Jaebum feel differently then?

He shakes himself. It’s an unproductive line of thought. He should only be concerned with the Witness in order to carry out the mission Jaebum gave to him: to figure out what role Son Youngho plays in this mess, and let Jaebum know so he can deal with it and prevent an impending apocalypse. Simple.

He turns his phone back on, ignores the numerous messages on his screen, and dials Suzy. “Hey,” he says. “When can we meet?”

  
  
  
  


“I just don’t understand  _ why _ you want to meet with Son Youngho,” Suzy says the next day as they drive out to his lab. “Is this some sort of trauma-induced response?”

“Response to what?”

“Being shot at? Jinyoung, come on.”

“Oh, right. That was traumatic. Yes. But no. I mean, it’s not because of that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m interested in his research.”

Suzy gives him a look of total disgust. This is reasonable; Jinyoung had spent hours the night before doing a deep-dive through some sketchy back channels of the internet into numerous science journals, in which Son Youngho had published in both English and Korean, and Jinyoung understood none of it. What he had managed to discern (from the titles of the journals) was that Son Youngho was a physicist who worked closely with a team of scientists from other disciplines, and that Jinyoung’s career path had not given him a thorough understanding of anything except how to make people feel like they knew you enough to buy more albums.

“Jinyoung, you’re truly the worst.”

“Why can’t I be interested in his research?”

“Why can’t you tell me the truth?”

This is fair enough. Jinyoung glances over at her, wondering just how far her suspension of disbelief would extend in this scenario. She’s always been very fair and patient in their friendship—excluding the brief period of time when she was successful and JJ Project had failed and he was kind of an ass about it and she stopped talking to him—so he figures that he owes her something for helping him.

“You wouldn’t believe the truth.”

“Try me.”

He nods out at the road. Somewhere in the distant mountains is Son Youngho’s lab. They will arrive there soon, and then, Jinyoung hopes, he’ll get some kind of answers. “Do you know what Son Youngho researches?”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “Something to do with physics.”

“What if,” Jinyoung says very carefully, “what he’s doing is harmful?”

Suzy falls silent. In the quiet, Jinyoung can hear a song playing on the radio, too soft for him to hear when they were talking. It’s a Got7 song, he realizes.  _ Every day, every night, feel like a fool, you gotta know.  _ He loves it when cheesy pop music relates to his life. Just loves it.

Suzy clears her throat. “Jinyoung, the Witness  _ trusts _ him.”

“And you trust the Witness?”

She snorts. “We can do all the charity donations and campaigns we want, but at least he’s got an actual plan to make the world a better place.”

“And how does his plan work, Suzy? By magic?”

“He’s seen it,” Suzy says simply, and he knows this conversation is over, at least for the moment. If Suzy wants to believe in magic and cult leaders, there isn’t much he can do about it.

They arrive at the lab. It is a nondescript concrete building about three stories tall. Jinyoung parks the car and they walk up to the front door. He glances momentarily at the overcast sky, chilled a little by the odd thought that he doesn’t know when he’ll see it again.

Inside, the building is somehow more generic than outside. They stand for a moment, and then a small woman in a lab coat rushes up to them. “They’re expecting you,” she says, gesturing them forward. “Come on.”

They follow her through winding hallways painted in a drab beige. Neither of them speaks, though Jinyoung can feel both of their moods changing as they get lost in the maze and the temperature of the building perceptibly drops a few degrees. The woman in front of them does not slow down, her steps thudding on the cheap carpet, so Jinyoung doesn’t have a chance to check to see if Suzy looks as uncomfortable as he feels.

They arrive in a large hallway with two metal doors leading into—something. “This is the lab,” says the woman. She gives them a polite, if strained smile, and gestures to the doors. “They’re waiting for you.”

Jinyoung glances at Suzy. Her face is impassive as she stares down the doors. Apparently her experience with the cult didn’t include creepy labs before now.

But answers lie on the other side of that door. “Thank you,” he says to the woman, who seems to take this as her cue to dismiss herself, and rushes off just as quickly as they’d come. 

He holds his breath, and pushes open the door.

The first thing he sees is a massive metal machine. He can’t even tell what it is or does, exactly. He only knows it’s a machine because of the way it’s humming. The hum even comes up through his shoes.

“You made it!”

Son Youngho darts out from a small door and comes up to them with his arms spread wide.

“Thanks for having us,” Jinyoung says quickly. Suzy is strangely quiet, her eyes focused on something behind Son Youngho.

Jinyoung looks. His heartbeat stops, then stutters forward. It’s the Witness, standing and looking up at the machine.

His head turns. He looks right at Jinyoung. It feels as though a comet has hit the earth.

“Welcome to the future,” Son Youngho says with a smile. He is delighted, giddy, like a child. The Witness does not move, just stands there staring into Jinyoung’s soul. Son Youngho rests a hand lightly on Jinyoung’s shoulder. “He wants to speak with you,” he says. Then he leads Suzy away, and Jinyoung is left in the room with only the machine and the Witness.

“Don’t come any closer,” the Witness says when they are alone. His voice sounds strangely familiar, now that it’s not distorted by a microphone, but Jinyoung can’t place it. The laughing eyes of the mask mock him.

“What do you want?” Jinyoung demands.

“To show you the future.” The Witness gestures, and Jinyoung notices that there is a chair in the center of the machine. “Do you want the answer to your questions?”

Jinyoung can’t move. His whole body begins to tremble as he stares at the machine.

“I don’t know,” he says.

The mask tilts, its mocking eyes moving along with the man’s head. “You love him, don’t you? Im Jaebum.”

Jinyoung gasps. “Don’t you dare—”

“There is nothing about you that I have not already seen and foretold,” says the Witness. “Do you want the answer to your questions?”

Jinyoung rips his eyes from the mask and looks at the chair. This crazy cult leader would have him sit in that chair and—what, exactly? Die, no doubt. A blood sacrifice for his cause.

“What do you want most, Park Jinyoung?”

Jinyoung’s eyes dart back to the mask. “I thought you knew everything about me.”

“What do you want most?”

Jinyoung licks his dry lips. The words stick in his throat, choking him. He does not want to say it and yet it is an unstoppable force, pushing its way up and out of him, as though his words are fated.

“To be with him,” Jinyoung says.

“Do you want the answer to your questions?”

Jinyoung looks from the mask to the chair. In an instant, he makes his decision. His legs feel like lead, but he runs up to the chair, and sits down.

The laughing eyes mock him again. And then there is a bright light, and everything goes dark.

  
  
  
  


He comes to exactly where he left: in the chair in the machine. Something wet leaks from his nose. He reaches up to wipe it, and pulls back his hand to see blood. He pulls a tissue out of his pocket and stands up, walking on shaky legs out into the facility’s main floor.

But the Witness is gone. The room seems brighter than before. He looks up, and sees a distant hole in the roof, with a patch of blue sky high above.

“You overshot your goal by twenty years, I think.”

He snaps his head to the side so quickly he gets a crick in his neck. Wincing and pressing his hand against it, he manages to locate the source of the voice. In the dim light, he can’t tell much except that it’s a woman leaning against the door to the room.

“Who are you?” Jinyoung demands.

The woman steps forward. She has a rifle slung over her shoulder, and her graying hair is cut short. She smiles at him.

“Welcome to the future,” she says, giving him a smile that could bankrupt billionaires, even with the wrinkles lining her eyes.

“Suzy?” Jinyoung breathes.

She laughs. “It’s been a long time, Park Jinyoung.”

  
  
  
  


She takes him up to the roof of the facility. “We moved in here about twenty years ago. This would have been about ten years after the outbreak. Me, Wonpil, Tzuyu, some staff, and that lady who showed us back to the machine all those years ago. And Jaebum.”

For Jinyoung, that tour through the building was only minutes ago. “Who was she, then?”

“Min Sunyoung? She’s a physicist. Not as innovative as Son Youngho, but she did all the calculations. For time travel, you know. And she thought maybe we could undo all this mess.”

“So you sent Jaebum,” he says, staring at her lined face.

Her eyebrows lift. “Yes, because you’d left a message for him. We found it on one of the computers when we first arrived. You said that everything started with Son Youngho.”

Jinyoung’s brow furrows. “But if  _ you _ were  _ here _ , then why couldn’t Jaebum figure out who he was and just go kill him, or whatever he’d planned to do? Why did he have to find me?”

She smiles, but this isn’t a movie star smile. It’s pained. She brushes a hand back through her graying hair and sighs, then pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lights one. She’s stalling. “I had to know,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t tell them because I had to know, though I never imagined it would take this long,” she says, glancing back at him, her eyes dark. The sky overhead is a sunny blue and the world around them is very, very quiet. “I had to know who the Witness was. And now I do.”

She blows smoke into the air, leaning against the concrete wall with her eyes narrowed on a small group of men and women patrolling the fences surrounding the perimeter of the compound. What they are guarding themselves against, Jinyoung can’t tell.

“Then who is it?” Jinyoung demands.

She turns her head and stares at him. “He told me once that I was the one who showed him the way,” she says softly. She takes another drag of the cigarette. “That I was special and important. That I would stand with him and look out at the future. I never imagined…”

Jinyoung’s hands are shaking. “Suzy—”

“It won’t work, Jinyoung,” she says. “You can travel through time and look up all the magic books throughout all history but in the end you’ll only be left with this.” She gestures out at the world. “Silence, forever. Though maybe it’s better this way.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jinyoung says. He feels faint and puts a hand against the wall. “I’ve never even—”

“No,” she says, her eyes boring into him. “Not yet.”

He blinks at her. “I  _ wouldn’t _ .”

“Jaebum never figured out it was you, you know,” she says. She turns and leans against the wall, folding her arms around herself and peering up at the sky. “I never told him what I suspected. I thought it would destroy him. Or he would have tried to kill you. Either way, I couldn’t bear it. But that’s my sin to atone for.”

Jinyoung doesn’t know what to say, now. He is surely dreaming, and will wake up at any moment. But the sun on his skin feels warm and the wind picks up his hair, and Suzy seems startlingly real, painfully real. No one starts flying and the dream does not morph into something else. He is stuck here in a dying world, trying not to believe the words coming out of her mouth.

“He died about five years ago,” she says. “He never accepted that he failed, but the power source for the machine broke in this time, and there wasn’t anything more we could do, except keep on living.”

Jinyoung’s heart slows. After everything, he still winds up in a world without Jaebum. It feels painfully unfair, but this world still seems unreal to him, even if Suzy isn’t.

“Was he happy?” Jinyoung asks.

“No,” Suzy says. “But happiness really isn’t enough to live on, anyway.”

Jinyoung turns and looks out at the countryside stretching out for miles. If Jaebum had ever just listened to him, maybe they could have been happy, even for a short time. He thinks that would be enough to live on, for him at least. A little bit of happiness weighed against a lot of pain, suffering, and death. But surely even a little bit of happiness was heavy enough to outweigh the rest, for a little while.

“In my time, though, he’s still alive,” Jinyoung says.

“In your time, everyone is still alive,” Suzy says. “But everybody dies. That’s what you said, isn’t it? That if life is so short, it can’t be wasted on things that won’t be as good as you imagine them.”

His mouth feels dry and his head feels faint. Hearing Jaebum’s words spoken to him like that doesn’t make sense at all. None of this makes sense.

“It’s not so bad now,” she continues, coming to stand beside him. “People are rebuilding. Trying to make lives for themselves. People aren’t as violent as they were in those first years. We keep going.”

Jinyoung grips the concrete, letting its small rocks dig into his skin. “But it isn’t  _ fair _ ,” he spits out. He imagines Jaebum the way he’d arrived at his hotel room, dirty and desperate for a solution. “Why should anyone have to die at all?”

Suzy laughs. “And there he is,” she whispers. “The man who has witnessed the end of the world.”

Before he can say anything to her, a door clangs open. They both turn to see a boy, about fifteen years old, standing in the stairwell and looking at him. Jinyoung’s heart stops briefly. The boy looks like—

“Mom?” says the boy, looking at Suzy.

“I’ll be down soon,” she says. “I have a visitor.”

The boy looks at Jinyoung. Jinyoung stares into Jaebum’s eyes, his heart pounding hard. The boy turns and disappears down the stairs.

Jinyoung turns to Suzy.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, not meeting his gaze. “You have nothing to be envious of.”

Jinyoung doesn’t say anything. He’s stunned, imagining the two of them carrying on this life together at the end of the world, forgetting what they’d lost, cavalier and unconcerned.

“Stop,” she says sharply. “We have  _ nothing  _ here, Jinyoung. You took the whole world from us with your choices. We took solace in whoever was left.”

“But you knew I loved—”

“No one can betray the dead.” She looks at him again, her eyes piercing and level. “You want to win this competition, Jinyoung? There is no competition. I would have given anything to have you, but I’d already lost you years ago. And so had he.” She laughs lightly. “Is this the future you wanted to see?”

He opens his mouth, but he feels funny. His body begins to tingle all over.

“Time to go,” Suzy says.

Everything goes dark.

  
  
  
  
  


He wakes in the chair, exactly as he’d left.

He tells himself it had simply been a vivid hallucination. But he can smell cigarette smoke on his clothes. His nose is bleeding again.

He looks out. The Witness stands before him, ghostlike and impassive.

“Is it true?” Jinyoung asks. His voice echoes in the dark room.

The Witness is silent. For a long moment, Jinyoung thinks he won’t speak. Then—

“I remember this,” he says, his voice soft, like a stream of water. “This moment.”

At the sound of his voice, Jinyoung begins to tremble.

“Your fears are understandable,” the Witness continues. “This path looks like it leads down a dark road.”

“Is it true?” Jinyoung demands again. He stands up on shaky legs. It takes all of his strength not to collapse to the floor.

“If you want to be with him,” the Witness says in a low voice, tempting and appealing, like an idol demanding an offering, “this is the way.”

“IS IT TRUE?” Jinyoung cries out.

The mask stares back at him. Jinyoung doesn’t dare to breathe.

Then, very slowly, the Witness reaches up. As his hand comes up to the mask, Jinyoung begins to shake even more violently.

He removes the mask.

It’s Jinyoung’s own face staring back at him.

He faints.

  
  
  
  


He comes to a moment later on his hands and knees, staring at the concrete floor. He looks up. He sees himself.

Only now that the shock has been numbed by fainting, he can get a better look at himself. The Jinyoung standing a few feet away from him looks older—not quite as old as the Suzy he’d just met or even the Jaebum who appeared at his hotel room, but older nonetheless. Thinner and more weary. He crooks a smile and Jinyoung feels something crawl down his back.

“Eerie, isn’t it?” says—the Witness. 

This is someone else, a specter of the future he won’t become.

“You will, though,” says the Witness.

“What makes you so sure?”

“I  _ am _ you,” the Witness laughs. “Guess those Stray Kids songs were really onto something, huh?”

Jinyoung stares at himself in disbelief. “Are you—are you making jokes?”

“I guess I haven’t gotten funnier,” the Witness says drily. “Can’t even make myself laugh.”

He walks a short distance away, staring up at the machine. Jinyoung sits on the floor, staring at himself, trying to make sense of what is happening.

“I remember feeling horrified by what I’d become,” says the Witness. “I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t understand yet.”

Jinyoung staggers to his feet, staring himself down. “What do I not understand?”

Jinyoung turns to himself. “Everything.”

And then in a motion as quick as the flap of a butterfly’s wing, he crosses the distance between them, and touches his hand to Jinyoung’s forehead.

  
  
  
  


Paradox.

Jinyoung floats through primordial soup, conscious only of the drift.

He rises on the wing of a dragonfly, sparkling in the sun.

He dies.

He lives.

He breathes.

The ground hardens and softens.

In the fog, he sees himself in flashes. Jaebum, laughing. Suzy, smiling. He feels the warmth of the sun, the gentle drift of the breeze.

He comes into himself. He is somewhere far away, in the distant past, listening to bells toll in the temple. A priest—someone he knows, an eternal friend—says  _ this may not give you the resolution you seek. _ He hands Jinyoung a book.

He is adrift. The world turns. Lights flood the night. Then disappear.

He is standing on a hill.  _ Who are you looking for? _ says the woman next to him. In the distance is the lab where the time machine sits, the key to everything.  _ I’ll find him in the end _ , Jinyoung hears himself say.

He breathes. Wheezes.

The plane is crashing toward the earth, falling rapidly, and his heart is racing,  _ this is the end _ .

But it is not the end. There is only the ouroborus, the snake eating its tail, ending without beginning, a repeated loop. Time, destroying itself, reviving itself, forever. He cuts off its head.

And then, he is alone.

  
  
  
  


“Do you understand?”

Jinyoung opens his eyes and finds himself looking back at him.

“Yes,” he says in a hoarse voice. He understands. The answer to everything lies in the past, lies in the future. To get what he wants, he must go through the storm. Not around it, not above it, not below it. Directly into the eye.

“Good.” The Witness removes his hand, and Jinyoung feels the world right itself. “Son Youngho tried to kill Jaebum,” he says. “He disobeyed my direct orders. He doesn’t understand who Jaebum is, and refused to believe that Jaebum’s attempt to sabotage us is part of our greater plan.”

“I understand.”

  
  
  
  


It seems like Jinyoung spends weeks in the facility, traveling through time, learning about the past and present and future, becoming the one who has witnessed the end of all things. In the end, though, it is only a few hours—from a certain point of view. What is time, if you can bend it to your own will?

When he leaves, the sky is dark. He finds that Suzy left hours ago with Son Youngho to return to Seoul. Jinyoung turns to look at himself, uncertain if he should say goodbye to this unnatural mentor. But the Witness is already disappearing back into the building, to the time machine that made him possible.

Jinyoung returns to his apartment. He is not surprised to find Jaebum there. He has already remembered it happening this way.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jaebum comments.

“Something like that,” Jinyoung says drily. He nods in the direction of Jaebum’s abdomen. “I thought you might be dead.”

Jaebum gives him a dangerous grin and lifts his shirt to reveal his scarred skin. Jinyoung’s heart picks up its pace. The bullet wound looks grisly, but it has begun to heal. “I spent a few weeks in my time before I could travel again,” he says. “I’ll live.”

Jinyoung unlocks the door to his apartment, trying not to imagine Jaebum and Suzy in that future he’d seen, carrying on without him like they’d forgotten what they’d lost. He doesn’t want to feel jealous, but he does.

Jaebum follows him inside. “Are you okay?” he asks, taking off his shoes while Jinyoung goes through the apartment turning on the lights.

Jinyoung turns to look at him. He is so unfairly attractive, even like this, ragged from years of living a difficult life. And now Jinyoung understands how to make sure he will never suffer again.

“I found him,” Jinyoung says. “The man in the photo. His name is Son Youngho. He’s a physicist.”

Jaebum visibly pales, and races to write down the name. Jinyoung hands him his phone, on which he’d pulled up Son Youngho’s research company’s website. Jaebum scrolls through it eagerly, blissfully unaware that Jinyoung has just lied to him.

But it’s for the best. Kill two birds with one stone. Jaebum completes his mission, and Jinyoung eliminates a traitor so he can carry on with his. Then one day, after he breaks time, they will be together again.

“What are you going to do?” Jinyoung asks.

“I’m going to kill him,” Jaebum says, still scribbling an address on a sheet of paper. “And undo all the destruction he’s caused.”

“Will killing him really undo anything?” Jinyoung asks. “You can’t hold one man accountable for all of human violence and suffering.”

Jaebum’s pen slows on the paper. He stops, and turns to look at Jinyoung.

“If one man dies so that a whole world of people gets a second chance at life, I’m willing to take those odds.”

“But what kind of life is it, really?” Jinyoung demands.

Jaebum falls silent, staring at him. Jinyoung shifts uncomfortably under his gaze.

“I rejected you, didn’t I?” Jaebum says quietly. “I’d forgotten when we are.”

Jinyoung’s eyes dart away. He doesn’t want Jaebum to see his anguish, his pathetic heartache.

Jaebum takes a step closer. He reaches out to brush Jinyoung’s hair away from his face, and sighs softly, his mouth turned down in a familiar frown.

“Jinyoung,” he says softly. “I never meant to hurt you. It was just practical. But it was never about a lack of feeling.”

Jinyoung’s heart pounds traitorously in his chest. He wishes Jaebum would never move away. This is all he wants: the two of them, together forever, with nothing to separate them. Why is it so impossible?

Jaebum sighs again, and then very gently presses his lips against Jinyoung’s. His mouth is warm, and his fingers curl into Jinyoung’s hair, bringing him closer until they are flush against each other. For a moment, time stops.

“There will always be you and me,” Jaebum whispers, his breath warm on Jinyoung’s skin. “Nothing changes that.”

And then he leaves. Jinyoung can’t say anything to stop him from going.

  
  
  
  


There is only one way to break time.

It begins, or it ends, the day Jinyoung gets on a plane. In real time, it has been exactly one month since Son Youngho was murdered. Few people knew who he was, and few people cared. It barely made the news.

For Jinyoung, it has been decades.

He does not know where the Witness begins and where he ends. It seems he goes through the motions over and over again. He finds followers and teaches them. He combs through the past for answers. All for a world where he and Jaebum can finally be together.

The virus is easy enough to manufacture because it does not need to be manufactured, not really. He finds it in the past and brings it back in a vial, where a scientist who he trusts synthesizes it. Then he puts the vial into the pocket of his coat and goes to get on the plane. Some things, he must do himself. And this has all happened before. He has witnessed it.

He’s sitting in his seat when his phone rings. As the door to the plane is still open, he answers it.

“Hello?”

“Jinyoung?”

He almost drops the phone. It’s Jaebum on the other end of the line. “Hey,” Jinyoung says quickly. “I thought you were still recovering.”

“It’s boring,” Jaebum says. “And you haven’t come to see me.”

Jinyoung doesn’t say anything, thinking about how they left off. Jaebum clears his throat.

“I’m sorry about how we left things,” Jaebum says. “I know—I know it’s awkward. And it’s not what you want. But I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Jinyoung manages to say.

“Listen,” Jaebum says. “I wrote this song, and—well, it’s about you. I want to play it for you.”

“I’m on a plane,” Jinyoung says.

“Well, then call me when you land, and I’ll play it then. Okay?”

Jinyoung doesn’t say anything. He knows how this ends. Suffering leading toward the end of suffering. Eternal now. Perfection, forever.

Jaebum sighs. “I know it might be hard to believe right now,” he says, “But I’ll always be by your side. We’ll have our  _ graves _ side by side, won’t we?”

Jinyoung laughs. He feels the vial in his pocket, and thinks about the end of everything, the wasteland leading into a paradise without time, without death, without anything to keep them apart.

His hand stills in his pocket.

“Yeah,” he says. “We will.”

  
  
  


As it turns out, Jaebum did not have to kill anyone to change the course of time.

He had to save someone.

  
  
  


Jinyoung wakes up in his hotel room.

He sits up, rubbing his head. It pounds like he’d hit it against something. He looks around.

The television is playing cartoons.

Jinyoung pushes himself to his feet and runs to the door. He looks right and left, but no one appears in the hallway. Shaking, he pulls out his phone.

It’s the day Jaebum first appeared to him. Or will appear.

Rubbing his head, he closes the door and returns to the inside of his room. He watches cartoons until the sunlight fades and turns to night, but no one appears. His watch is undamaged. The cartoons keep playing.

Finally, he picks up his phone and calls Jaebum. “Hey,” he says, without much introduction. “Did you write a song about me?”

Jaebum laughs, confused. “No,” he says. “Do you want me to?”

Jinyoung tries not to gasp. His head is still throbbing, but for the first time in his life, he feels brave enough to live in the messiness of uncertainty.

“Yeah,” he says. “Listen, I need to tell you something.”

He smiles to himself. Maybe it will hurt like hell, but—well, the future isn’t written yet.

_end_.


End file.
